Way too many people can’t read – adults and kids

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The numbers are shocking.

“Illiteracy has become such a serious problem in our country that 130 million adults are now unable to read a simple story to their children,” reports the National Literacy Institute.

That’s half the adult population. 

That same half has difficulty performing such basic tasks such as reading the labels of their prescription drugs.

A little more than half of adults read below a sixth grade reading level. One in five are flat out illiterate. A majority of Americans don’t read a single book through the course of a year. Only one-in-three kids read for pleasure. Etc.

The list of alarming statistics goes on and on. You really need to take a look.

Investigative Post has written about literacy problems in Western New York involving both adults and school children. Most concerning was our report in April on reading scores at the 99 school districts – urban, suburban and rural – in the eight counties of WNY. Our analysis found only 39 percent of students in grades three through five read at grade level. Thirty percent of students in grades three through eight are so far behind they’re illiterate. 

A poor choice of reading curriculum in schools contributes to these numbers, both locally and nationally. Poverty does, even moreso. But there are cultural factors at play, as well. We’re preoccupied with sports, social media, our cell phones, cable TV and assorted other distractions. 

We’re amusing ourselves to death, as Neil Postman once put it. Or, as Carl Bernstein once wrote, embracing the idiot culture.

Nearly twice as many Americans watched this year’s Super Bowl than the Harris-Trump presidential debate. Justin Bieber has five times as many Twitter followers as The New York Times. The most watched cable network for political news is Fox, which isn’t even a legitimate news organization.

All this ignorance has consequences. To make my case, I’ll point to an NBC News story in April, back when Joe Biden was still in the race.

People who turned to newspapers for political news – in order words, PEOPLE WHO READ – preferred Biden over Trump 70 to 21 percent. Biden also got the nod by people who turn to the national news networks – NBC, CBS and ABC – and digital news sites, many of them the online version of daily newspapers. 

At the other end of the spectrum, people who don’t follow political news favored Trump 53 to 27 percent. Trump was favored by smaller margins by those who prefer cable outlets and social media.

The sorry state of literacy also helps to explain why newspapers – the primary source of original reporting, even in their diminished condition – are fading. A broken business model has a lot to do with it, but so does the growing number of people who simply aren’t equipped to consume their product, the printed word.

Reading the aforementioned numbers from the National Literacy Institute was sobering for me as the publisher of a text-heavy news site. It confirmed for me the need for us to find multiple ways of telling our stories, not just in words, but also in videos, graphics and other easy-to-digest formats. That doesn’t mean we dumb down, but rather be creative in how we present our reporting to meet the audience where they’re at.

On the local media front, a Florida billionaire has upped his stake in Lee Enterprises, whose holdings include The Buffalo News, and an out-of-town chain has purchased the Bee newspapers, the largest suburban publisher in WNY.

Mackenzie Shuman of The Buffalo News had a really good piece about what a Trump presidency likely means for the environment. In a word: disaster.

Our First Amendment rights are on the firing line, as evidenced by this report by The Intercept and pieces here and here by the Marshall Project. The dangers outlined in these stories were present before election day and are more ominous now that Trump has been elected. Suffice to say, those in power, be they in government or the tech sector, don’t believe in the credo of “I may disagree with what you have to say, but I defend your right to say it.” Instead, they want to stifle speech they disagree with.

A growing number of people are fleeing Twitter, with Bluesky being the flavor of the month. I signed up for an account last week. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I had zero interest in the Mike Tyson fight last week – come on, the guy is 58 – but it did remind me of the great Muhammad Ali. Come on Howard, tell it like it is.

Jim Heaney